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Avionics General Safety Training

Your Flight Review: Inexpensive Prep Tips

The only downside to not getting the FR endorsement on the first time you fly with a CFI is that if your 24 months has expired since your last FR, you can't fly as PIC (that includes solo) until you get a new endorsement. Um, that's also a very good reason for not putting your FR off until the last moment as the realities of aviation karma include delivering lousy weather for the one day you have available for the FR flight before it expires.

Rick Durden
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Edited By:

kmeyne

One would think that a fairly simple recurrent training requirement established by the FAA over 40 years ago would be a ho-hum thing by now.

One would be wrong.

The FAR Part 61.56 requirement to fly with an instructor biennially (every two years) and receive an endorsement of a pilot’s basic fitness for flight is shockingly prosaic when compared to what professional pilots must do for recurrent training under Part 135 or 121. Yet the flight review (FR) still gives many pilots the vapors and has spawned a cottage industry in “how to prepare” courses.

Rick Durden

Senior Editor Rick Durden has written for Aviation Consumer since 1994 and specializes in aviation law. Rick is an active CFII and holds an ATP with type ratings in the Douglas DC-3 and Cessna Citation. He is the author of The Thinking Pilot’s Flight Manual or, How to Survive Flying Little Airplanes and Have a Ball Doing It, Vols. 1 & 2.